Siesta Lake

More About the Image:

Ansel Adams made this image circa 1958 while driving across the Tioga Road in Yosemite National Park.  As its name would imply, the lake sits languid in a tiny granite bowl above the Tuolumne River Canyon.  Protected by granite ridges and a dense lodgepole forest, the placid surface provides stunning reflections all summer long.  In this image, Ansel has created a scene that would imply we enjoy an eponymous siesta by the shore.  The calm waters and lack of a skyline keeps our gaze solemnly earthward.  The faint hint of sunlight on the far-left bank lets us know it is close to sunset and time to wind down.  The brilliant diagonals of the fallen trees, themselves reposed in the water, reinforce the scene with a three-dimensional quality, giving it a comforting fidelity.  Ansel would include this image in his Portfolio 4 about which he wrote, ‘In some [images], the essences of light and space dominate [. . .] and the luminous insistence of growing things.  Shape of nature, transformed into what the artist calls forms by the controlled eye and perceptive spirit, are presented here as the equivalents of experience.’ (P pg. undesignated)  At the end of his life, Ansel communicated the significance of this image by including it as one of the variants in his last major project, The Museum Set, and was published in Yosemite and the Range of Light.  The image was also later added to the Special Edition of Yosemite series.